The Future

Today, I’m at a cruising altitude
of some 35,000 feet, heading towards my first meeting with my granddaughter
Sophia Odette German. And I am
reborn into the world again, amazed at my own good fortune, excited about the
future.

We’ve survived the lunacy of
another presidential election, an exercise in excess and mudslinging,
half-truths and outright lies, one of the things that make this country
great. Nobody died, no buildings
burned, no army took over. We’ll
see if we can come together now and get it right, and we never come together
and get it right no matter who wins, and it’s still the best system in the
world. Isn’t that amazing?

When this tube of aluminum I’m
encased in hurled itself from the ground by forcing burning fuel through
carefully engineered orifices, building pressure barely below that required to
explode outright, pushing the tons of aluminum and steel and human bodies
faster and faster over acres of concrete until the wings could no longer remain
earthbound, lift overcame drag, we flew.
North over the Atlantic Coast we now fly above Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina where a scant 110 years ago two brothers managed to coax a powered
kite to skim off the sand and fly some 120feet for about 12 seconds.

We
fly toward a city and coastline that a week and a half ago was inundated in
more water than ever imagined, where hundreds of planes were grounded or
rerouted, people stranded, subways engulfed in water. And there followed a snowstorm this week, bringing ice and
cold. And the city breathes in and
out, and the people of America come together and sort out the damage and
devastation, lives move on, the city breathes the human drama of life.

There
are those predicting the end of America as a result of the election, of a dive
off a fiscal cliff, of cataclysm on Wall Street. If the election had gone the other way, the same predictions
would fill the airwaves, just from different sources.

There
is no fiscal cliff.

That’s
a term dreamed up by someone dreaming up fear. There are economic problems to deal with, and we will. Despite the best opposition from those
who would like to see us fail, we won’t.
Fear sells well, but it cannot control what we do and accomplish unless
we let it.

Most
of us get up each morning and do what we must. That’s the beauty of this experiment called America. And we are NOT a divided country,
despite what the talking heads and party leaders want to sell. We differ on policies, we differ on
beliefs, we differ on skin color and hair and teeth. But we come together when the chips are down. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was
a vocal and vehement critic of President Obama during the campaign, but when
New Jersey needed help with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, they
worked together and Governor Christie was also vocal in his thanks to the
president.

House
majority leader Boehner said it’s time to work together, to compromise;
President Obama said he intended to work with both parties, and to consult with
Mr. Romney in going forward. Mr.
Romney was gracious in his defeat, and urged those in his own party to search
for the common ground.

And
it’s out there, that common ground.
Always has been. It’s just
that so few have really been looking for it. Change is so very hard for most of us, and as we slow our own
walk it overtakes us and eventually buries us. But there are always those to fill our shoes.

And
I’m going to meet one of them, and I’m very excited.

I
can’t even imagine what her future will look like, as I think of the world my
mother grew up in, now passing on past her children to her grandchildren, my
son, my daughter.

Mother
road to grade school in a horse-drawn carriage in Pierce County, Nebraska. She lived through the Great Depression,
a depression manufactured by greed just like this current economic morass was
manufactured by greed. That was
compounded by the craziness of the weather in the 30s, the Dust Bowl, the tremendous
towering clouds that rolled through the Midwest. Phones were a luxury and bolted to the wall; ice was
delivered, not made in a refrigerator; there was no TV, little radio, some
electricity, few airplanes (those who could afford to fly dressed up in there
best clothes to do so); rockets were for the Fourth of July and there was a
man-in-the-moon but had never been one on it. Computers? iPods? Internet? Nike, Adidas, J.Crew? What will Sophia know that hasn’t even
yet been dreamed?

Barack
Obama will be a historical footnote for her, and I hope a good one.

The
give and take of our system requires that those in power will eventually be out
of power and others will take their place as the pendulum of politics swings
right and left, left and right. That
is a good thing and has served us well.
It is up to those of us who care to keep that rhythm first laid down by
the Founding Fathers.

Comments

...for some reason, your comments on this blog were deleted...might have been my fault, as I was receiving some spam and was trying to get rid of it...but thought I was being careful...anyhow, was in no way trying to delete legitimate comments...Rg

One more issue is that video gaming became one of the all-time most significant forms of entertainment for people of all ages. Kids play video games, plus adults do, too. Your XBox 360 is amongst the favorite games systems for folks who love to have a lot of games available to them, along with who like to experiment with live with other people all over the world. Thank you for sharing your thinking.

Thanks for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do some research about this. We got a grab a book from our local library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such excellent info being shared freely out there.